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14 ways to improve the UX of on-site search results

An effective site search tool is hugely important tool for ecommerce as it’s a common way for shoppers to navigate sites and find products.

In fact up to 30% of visitors will use the site search tool and these tend to be highly motivated shoppers who know exactly what they’re looking for.

The speed in which results are returned is very important, but there are also many other factors that influence the overall user experience and could be the difference between making a sale or losing a potential customer.

Return mixed results

This content is all relevant to search results as it helps to educate the customer and can help edge them towards making a purchase.

This example from pharmacist Boots shows how search results can be split out into different types of useful content, with products, prescription items and blog posts all presented separately alongside a tab showing ‘All results’.

Provide filtering options

This is a very obvious point and one that a vast majority of retailers adhere to, however some still fail to provide filtering options so it is worth flagging up.

Product filters are an essential feature for helping shoppers refine the search results and drill down to exactly what they’re looking for.

In a slightly obscure example, kilt retailer buyakilt.com saw a 26% increase in conversions and a whopping 76.1% boost in revenue after implementing a product filter which gave visitors an option to shop by kilt type and kilt pattern.

It’s very easy to display a star rating next to products within search results, which offers an element of social proof and is likely to encourage some shoppers to investigate further.

Include loyalty points information

If your company operates a loyalty scheme then it might be helpful to give customers details of the amount of points that each product is worth within the search results.

In this example from Boots, shoppers are notified exactly how many loyalty points they need in order to be able to afford each product.

Each point is obviously worth 1p so it’s not that difficult for customers to work out on their own, but adding that extra bit of information might just be enough to push them towards making a purchase.

Correct misspellings

It’s common for people to make spelling mistakes when searching for items, so site owners should compensate for this by using predictive text while the user is typing, and then showing suggested results when errors occur.

This avoids the frustration that could be caused by returning no results and forcing the user to enter the search term again.

Amazon is excellent at helping customers who have made an error. In this search for ‘playstaton 4’ it still returns results for the item that I was obviously looking for.

Multichannel results

Walmart has a useful dropdown menu at the top of its search results that enables shoppers to locate their nearest stockist just by entering their email address.

Reserve-and-collect tools are becoming increasingly important for multichannel retailers and this is a great way to simplify the process for customers.

Don’t return ‘no results’

If you don’t currently stock the product that user has just searched for then it’s best to avoid returning ‘no results’. It’s like admitting you’ve failed and telling the customer they should try one of your competitors.

Instead, offer them alternative products that may still be relevant to their search term. This shows that you’re trying to help them and also increases the chances that they’ll stay on your site.

For example, Nextflix doesn’t currently offer Avengers Assemble in the UK but there are still other films that might be of interest. That said, the first search result is laughably off-target…

Add a CTA or quick view option

If shoppers know what they’re looking for they might appreciate being able to add an item to their basket directly from the search results or quickly view the product details in an overlay without navigating to the product page.

In this example from Best Buy there are ‘Add to cart’ calls-to-action alongside each of the laser printers that came up in search results.

However the use of a CTA and quick view in search results is something that should be tested to see whether it actually increases conversions.

Allowing the customer to click through to a product page exposes them to additional product information and reviews, which might lead to higher conversion rates.

Ecommerce sites might even consider showing a CTA to returning customers only, as they might be further down the purchase journey and so require less persuading.

Present results by gender

Unless a customer is logged in or has used your site before then it may not be possible to determine if they are male or female.

To avoid clogging up the search results page with irrelevant products consider splitting the results out by gender.

A search for ‘blue shirt’ on River Island returns two different columns of products, as well as a button that leads to ‘kids results’.

Consider product information for complex products

For electronic items or high spec products it is useful to include a product summary in the search results to aid the customer’s decision making.

In this example of a search for ‘ipod’, electronics retailer Newegg lists important product information alongside the image and cost.

With so much information to sort through it would be an arduous process to navigate to the product page for each item to check the exact specification. Therefore a simple summary of the most important details reduces customer frustration.

Similarly, new data from ResponseTap that highlights a fairly typical purchase journey shows the importance of mobile for travel companies, as customers often browse the mobile web as well as calling travel operators while researching their holiday options.

“If there’s one thing you have if you run a small business, it’s time. If there’s one thing you probably don’t have, it’s money.”

I have to credit the above statement to Will Critchlow, it condenses what I’m about to discuss in a simplified way.

Essentially social media costs nothing but can be a fairly time consuming practice depending on how many platforms you choose to use. Social media is also the key way for a small business to develop awareness, raise its profile, gauge its market and interact with existing and future customers.

As a small business you’re in a great position to start exploiting social media for all its worth.

As the UK is celebrating its first Small Business Saturday on 7th December 2013, here I present the first in a series of posts that will take a look at each individual social media platform, and highlight how your small business can wring the best out of each one.

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.